New Google Shopping tools cater to physical stores

Google has added some features to its Google Shopping platform to help physical and local merchants drive traffic to their stores.

The company introduced a “See What’s In Store” feature that enables brick-and-mortar stores to provide a list of their inventory for free. Google will also allow retailers to add store locations to video campaigns on YouTube and to purchase display ads with full listings of inventory and pricing information, according to Tech Crunch.

Surojit Chatterjee, Google Shopping’s head of product, says he thinks 80 percent of shoppers will visit a store if they know they will find there what they are looking for. High-tech products retailer Boulanger, which is testing the new display ads, attracted some 20,000 visits to its stores, Chatterjee says, with the resultant sales bump “delivering a return of 42 times its investment on ad spend.”